Tesla
Motors CEO Elon Musk has nearly succeeded in bringing his company
public, despite personal
financial issues that have prevented him from pouring more
venture capital into the firm. The initial public offering
was announced
in late January, but is on the verge of completion -- possibly
coming as soon as next week.

This will be the first major IPO
of an American automaker since Ford Motor Co. went public in 1956.
It comes at a time when Tesla is phasing out the first generation of
its high-end luxury roadster, and preparing to sell an entry-luxury
sedan, the
Model S. Tesla also recently received $50M
USD from Toyota to help it develop electric vehicles.

One
of the biggest dangers of an IPO is underpricing. Many IPOs
have been underpriced over the last several decades, leading to
companies missing out on a large amount of vital revenue. To
help prevent that Tesla is holding its Road Show, going before heads
of top Wall Street investment institutions to try to convince them
how much the company is really worth.

In a slide #19 of an
impressive Road Show presentation delivered by Musk, he reveals a
trio of upcoming all-electric vehicles. The first up is a hot
new cabriolet (hard-top) design. The model seems like a direct
response to Fisker's
Karma S "Sunset" convertible.

Also incoming
are a van and SUV/crossover. Both have a lot of curves and look
kind of bulbous. Whether you love or hate the designs, you have
to admit, they would stand out in a parking lot.

Musk also
revealed other intriguing tidbits in the presentation. Among
them, Tesla Motors will be adopting liquid cooling for the high power
electronics used in its electrical vehicles. Liquid cooling,
commonly used in gaming and high performance computing, can be even
more effective than forced convection and could allow for higher
performance and longer ranges.

Tesla also plans to liquid cool
its motors, starting with the Model S.

Probably the IGBT's (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) which do the conversion from the high voltage/current DC from the battery to AC used by the motors and vice versa. Electric vehicles, while very efficient compared to gas, are still not perfectly efficient (I hear around 80% from battery to wheel) so there will be a lot of waste heat from the power electronics.

Exactly. There's a big difference between a small, limited duty cycle motor/controller in a hybrid and a continuous duty cycle motor/controller in these vehicles. My company has developed a number of large current brushless DC motors for aerospace applications, and that alone is a task, not even considering the battery problem.

The people who think people who are trying to keep this technology down need to take off their tin-foil hats and realize that we're pouring billions into this and we still don't have a product that works for most people, and it's doubtful that most of the billions we're pouring in are really doing much except helping guys like Musk fly around in his private jet. Fundamentally, the best product we can make, which is expensive even with large federal subsidies, isn't good enough. Sure, a 100 mile car works for commuting to the office and home for many, but most of us take trips on the weekends well over 100 miles, which means only one of these vehicles per household in the best situation. Even considering a 2 car family, if your wife takes the internal combustion vehicle somewhere, you're now tethered to your house. Realistically, it just isn't even close to being there for most people.

I looked into using a DC motor to do a conversion in my old Ranger. That thing would make a lot of heat also since you are stepping the voltage up from 12V in the batteries to near 500V at the motor. The resistive circuits for that will get quite hot along with the motor itself.

"Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology." -- Intel blogger Nick Knupffer